PROVIDENCE – A top executive at Textron Inc. said last week the company is looking to make new acquisitions rather than sell off its existing divisions.

Textron Chief Executive Officer Scott Donnelly “wants to be an acquirer of businesses, not a seller,” Fred Strader, who last month became CEO of Textron Systems, the company’s defense unit, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We are starting to look again. But absolutely, there will be opportunities.”

Strader, 56, cited sensors, reconnaissance systems and equipment to protect soldiers and vehicles as areas that Textron is eying based on the vision the Pentagon put forward in the Quadrennial Defense Review released last week.

Robert Stallard, an analyst at Macquarie Capital in New York, told Bloomberg that defense purchases would not help Textron in the near term because the biggest driver of the company’s health is Cessna.

“Spending a lot of time adding to defense isn’t going to help the share prices, but it would help the defense sector get more coherent and give it a critical mass,” Stallard said.